Monday, February 23, 2015

Movie talk

I usually write something about the Oscars each year,  and usually end up watching a fair slab of it, as you never know, I might get to see Steven Spielberg in the audience, and that makes it all worthwhile. 

Not that I have seen more than about 20 minutes of this year's show yet, but here are some quick comments:

*  It seems Neil Patrick Harris' job as host has had distinctly lukewarm reviews.  Good - I really don't care for the guy.   On the other hand, how many years has it been since anyone said - "gee, he/she did a great job hosting that show last night"?   I have no idea - but it seems like decades.  I remember finding Steve Martin funny one year, and then I think he hosted again and was flat.  Chevy Chase was funny once too, if I recall correctly.  But the show just seems to defeat everyone now, alternating each year between "flat" and "awful". 

* The only big nominated movie I have seen this year was The Grand Budapest Hotel - and I didn't care for it.   Birdman, the best movie winner, I see has made all of $38 million in the US, and as an eccentric black comedy, it was likely destined to not do well commercially.  They really don't go out of their way to reward box office success these days, do they?  

* By far the most critically praised movie of the year - Boyhood - came away with just one actor award.  I saw a funny tweet about that (remembering that it was a film made over 12 years):




Heh.  Haven't seen it, but I heard it has reappeared at the cinema.  Perhaps I should make the trip.

*  Hey, if weren't convinced before that tattoos are a terrible distraction from everything else about a nicely presented woman, didn't Lady Gaga's inside arm tatts make for a change of mind?



* Clint Eastwood's movie won a gong for sound editing only?  Lots of liberal critics liked it, so I am a bit surprised.  Maybe it was the fake baby that put them off...  

* That screen writer for The Imitation Game looked awfully young.   Yeah, he's 34, and a very young looking 34 at that.   It sounded like he was going to say he was gay like Turing, but apparently he's not.   Well, he seemed a nice enough guy, I guess, except it is precisely because of his screenplay's inventions that I don't want to pay to see the movie.  Sorry. 

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